SPEW

Tue, Oct 24

31 HORROR STORIES -- "The Treader of the Dust" (1935)

@ 1:00 PM

So much horror is caused by people absolutely having to know.

H.P. Lovecraft and his circle realized this, and no one better than Clark Ashton Smith. The third-to-last paragraph of this nasty little fucker has one of the best "entrances" ever by a monster. I'm amazed someone like Takashi Miike or Eli Roth haven't filmed it, to the letter:

"It was a figure no larger than a young child, but sere and shriveled as some millennial mummy. Its hairless head, its unfeatured face, borne on a neck of skeleton thinness, were lined with a thousand reticulated wrinkles. The body was like that of some monstrous, withered abortion that had never drawn breath. The pipy arms, ending in bony claws were outthrust as if ankylosed in the posture of an eternal dreadful groping. The legs, with feet like those of a pigmy Death, were drawn tightly together as though confined by the swathings of the tomb; nor was there any movement or striding or pacing. Upright. and rigid, the horror floated swiftly down the wan, deathly gray beam toward Sebastian."